


Disasters In Disguise

by watchingthestars13



Series: The Life And Times Of Emma Barton [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cuddling, Emma is great at hugging, F/M, Fluff, Gen, It passes when the hugs come out, M/M, some minor angst, teenagers kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watchingthestars13/pseuds/watchingthestars13
Summary: So, apparently everyone Emma knows is a superhero. Or a mutant. Whatever the hell the difference is. Obviously, she deals with that the only way she knows how to: acceptance, hugs, and movie nights





	

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on tumblr! Tell me about your headcanons, your opinions, your cats! I'm immensely interested. I'm on there as hots-of-love (if I knew how to hide a hyperlink behind a word, I would)  
> Now, enjoy! <3

 

Of all the new, great things Damian did now that they were dating, the hair thing was the _best_. She made sure to have her hair down as much as possible whenever he'd come around just to sit him down on a couch and snuggle up in his lap.

Sure, the whole lap-thing was great too, and he was good at making them fit together so that nobody's limbs fell asleep, but _the hair thing._

At the moment, Damian's legs were spread and she was sat between them, one leg thrown over his and curled a little to the side so she could use the armrest as a backrest. And Damian's hand was in her hair, gently rubbing circles into her scalp with his fingertips and carding the same hand through her hair at the same time. 

She was entirely sure they were watching a movie, but that didn't matter, because her eyes were half-closed, and if she would've been able to, she would've been purring. Not only was the touch soothing, Damian was nice and warm against her, and she was wearing her soft Gotham Knights t-shirt and pj-shorts. It was nice, calm. 

What wasn't nice, was when Damian's hand stopped moving in her hair. Emma made a noise of protest, and heard Damian's little -tt- noise.

"You didn't hear a word I said, did you?" he questioned. Emma cracked an eye open to look at him and his stupidly gorgeous face. 

"Wha'?" she murmured, and Damian shook his head at her. 

"You really like this that much?" he questioned, and resumed the hair thing. Emma sighed happily as she relaxed again, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes.

"It is very very nice," Emma hummed. His quick exhalation of breath sounded like a laugh to her, and she smiled at him, leaning in to peck the corner of his mouth. He retaliated with a hesitant kiss that sent shivers down Emma's spine, and she wrapped her arms around his neck to drag him down to her level. 

Damian shifted until he was hovering above her, dropping little kisses on her mouth that made her curl her fingers into his hair tightly to keep him in place for a deeper one. 

She liked this, too. Kissing Damian was very nice. It made her feel tingly and warm, and was so intimate and toe-curling that she hated having to stop whenever they were forced to. There had been that one awkward time when Dick walked in on them kissing on the couch, much like this, and Dick had almost cried about how fast Damian was growing up as he squeezed him in a hug. Damian had nearly broken his nose and then Clint'd come to pick her up.

They weren't gonna get to be alone for long now either.

"Make room for Jesus!" came Darcy's yell from the elevator, and Damian was shoved onto the floor as the tv flickered with Emma's surprise. Damian seemed entirely unamused, and rolled over on his stomach with a grumble.

"What happened to 'have some good old teenage fun'?" Emma exclaimed as she sat up in the couch to glare at Darcy. The brunette smiled. 

"Yeah. About that. Your parents don't like it when I say that. Clint showed me a couple of websites that made me feel really bad for teenage moms, and Nat whooped my ass. So don't get pregnant, because they'll shove part of the blame on me." Damian squawked from the floor, turning it into a cough when Emma's cheeks turned red. 

"Geeze Louise. Why do we hang out at my place again?" she asked Damian on the floor, who looked up at her, cheeks faintly red, covered by his golden skin. 

"My family is worse."

"I like your family."

"You're obviously delusional." Emma nudged his side with her foot with a wrinkle of her nose. 

"And you're a Negative-Nelly. Though that's not new." Damian rolled his eyes as Darcy snickered, and walked towards Emma's room. Emma raised an eyebrow. "What's up, Darcy?"

"Bucky's lost a thing," she said elusively as she walked past Emma's room and slipped into Natasha's. Emma's other eyebrow flew up to join it's sibling. 

"Um. In Nat's bedroom? What could he have lost there?" 

"Okay, I lied," Darcy sighed, popping her head out through the door to give Emma and Damian a sheepish smile. "I'm looking for Natasha's good shoes. Like, the real good ones that look uncomfortable but are strangely comfy and very attractive. Don't tell her I'm stealing them for the night."

"The reds?" Emma asked inquisitively. Darcy whipped a hand out to point at her. 

"Yes. You know which ones I'm talking about."

"Well, sure. But they're in Clint's room." Darcy frowned. 

"Your parents are confusing. When're they gonna stop having separate bedrooms?" she asked. 

"Well, they always sleep together anyways, they just switch rooms from time to time. It's practical thinking," Emma shrugged as Darcy strode into Clint's room instead. "I think they're just too scared of the commitment."

"The two agents who have a child together, and sleep in the same bed, _and_ live together, are afraid of commitment?" Damian questioned incredulously from the floor. 

"I can admit that sounds weird," Darcy pondered as she appeared with the red shoes triumphantly in hand. "But when you know them, it makes some sort of twisted sense, surprisingly."

"Why do you need the reds anyway?" Emma questioned, leaning her head on the armrest of the couch, one foot still nudging Damian's side. 

"Bucky is taking me out," Darcy said slowly, eyes narrowing. "You're telling me you haven't helped him plan this?"

"No," Emma said, looking equally surprised. "He hasn't told me a thing about it. He vaguely planned something a while back, but that didn't go down. Wait, isn't it your anniversary, like, the tenth?" 

Darcy's face went pale. 

"Fuck!" she exclaimed loudly. "I knew I was forgetting something!"

"You seriously forgot your anniversary?" Emma exclaimed, sitting up straight again to flail her arms around like a really upset windmill. Even Damian raised a judgmental eyebrow at her. 

"Jane's writing an article for a conference and simultaneously trying to move her entire research grant here, with me doing the administrative work, and Bruce has me doing his spellchecks because he's terrible at it, and I've been helping Pepper write statements for the press about you and about how you look like an actual Clint-Natasha clone, and it slipped my mind!" She threw her hands in the air exasperatedly. 

"Man, you've been busy. I just figured you hung out with Bucky during the days and drank Tony's coffee that everyone seems to love," the redhead said thoughtfully. Darcy's eye twitched, and then she rubbed a hand over her face. 

"I see where the confusion comes from, then. Alright, fuck, I thought I could get away with looking good tonight, but now I have to make myself look banger. No comfortable reds for me. I have to use... The blues."

Emma gasped in horror as Darcy grimly returned to Clint's room for the blue high heels. 

"I was wrong. Our families are more or less equally dramatic. You included," Damian stated from the floor. Emma laughed, poking him one last time. 

"Gonna come back up here or not?"

"It doesn't seem safe to be anywhere but the floor when you try to kiss me. That way you can't shove me _onto_ the floor. I'm one step ahead." Emma laughed again, tossing her hair over her shoulder to smile down at him. It was getting so long now that it almost brushed Damian's back all the way from the couch. Long enough to reach beyond her shoulders and down on her back.

"At least wait until I can't be here to see the moon-eyes, c'mon guys. It's my duty as a responsible adult to separate necking teenagers."

"What the hell is _necking_? It makes me think about giraffes," Emma burst out laughing, looking up at Darcy again as she used a pointed blue shoe to point to them. 

"Making out, necking, playing tonsil hockey, tongue wrestling, sucking face. Do I need to keep going?"

"I think I got the image, thanks," Emma snorted. Darcy waved the shoes around again to make her point.

"You two should be glad it was me catching you making out, and not, like, your parents. Or, Christ on a cracker, _Bucky._ Consider yourself lucky nobody got tossed out a window," she said warningly. "Now I have to go take a shower and pluck my fucking eyebrows to get ready for an anniversary date that I forgot. Fuck, he's gonna know, isn't he?

"Definitely," Emma said as Darcy walked back to the elevator, grumbling about supersoldiers and their disadvantages. "Have fun on your date!"

"Thanks. And stop the tonsil hockey tournament before your parents catch you!" she called back before the elevator doors closed. 

"Are we really going to stop?" Damian asked as he rolled over on his back. Emma joined him on the floor, seeing as he kind of had a point about how she kept pushing him off whatever surface they're originally on. 

"I dunno. The universe is totally telling us to cut it out. But I like kissing you. Though, if you ever call making out 'necking' or any other weird slang, I'm breaking up with you," she told him, and poked him square in the chest. 

She wasn't prepared for the flip, but on some level, her body always was, so when Damian grabbed her, quick as lightning, and splayed her out on the carpet, she rolled with it, giggling a little as he pressed a kiss to her jaw. 

Only for her phone to ring insistently.

"The universe needs to fuck off," Damian growled as she flipped them back over again to reach for her phone on the coffee table. 'Hope' was flashing on the screen, along with Hope's face the day she came to school without glasses and with her hair cut shorter.

"Hey Hope, what's up?" Emma asked as she pressed her phone to her ear, one hand on Damian's chest for balance. 

"Can you come to the park in front of your tower?" Hope pleaded. "Like, right now?"

"Sure, what's going on?" Emma frowned as she got up, eliciting a curious look from Damian. 

"Nothing, it's nothing, I just..." Hope trailed off. Then she sighed exasperatedly. "Can't you just come? I'd prefer to do this in person."

"Sure, I'll be down. Is it okay if Damian comes too, or should I leave him here?" she asked, soothing Damian's squinty face with a look. 

"No, it's... It's fine. I wouldn't expect you to part now that you've found each other," Hope said, and Emma snickered.

"We'll come find you, okay? Just stay put." She hung up, and smiled down at Damian. "Give me a second to put on real pants and we'll go rescue Hope from whatever she's got herself tangled up in."

\---

They found Hope sitting in the middle of the park, on the grass. Her shoulders were slumped and she was pulling handfuls of grass out angrily, looking surprisingly shaken. 

"Summers," Damian called, and Hope looked up at them, her hair tucked into a sleep-tousled braid and her green eyes almost glowing. Despite the healthy glow to her, she looked miserable, and she was wearing sweats and ratty shoes, as if she'd just grabbed some shoes and gotten the hell out of her own home. 

Which was so weird, because Hope _loved_ her home. Emma knew from watching Hope distractedly stroke scuffs on doorframes as they walked through them, from watching her take a deep breath the moment she entered her house.

That made this strange call even more concerning. 

"Hey Hope. What's going on?" Emma asked worriedly. "What's with the urgency? And the violent ripping of the lawn?"

Hope looked down on her hands, as if she hadn't even noticed she had two small piles of grass next to her, and two patches of dirt in front of her. 

"I'm freaking the hell out," Hope stated.

"Yeah, I can see that, since the one time I suggested you wear sweats to school, you looked at me like I was asking you to light me on fire," Emma smiled gently, reaching a hand out. Hope stared at it for a full five seconds, before she shook herself out of it, and let herself be pulled to her feet. "Let's hear it. What's got you freaking?"

Hope took a second to gather her thoughts, and then looked exasperated.

"So... I'm... Kind of adopted? And I mean, I knew I was adopted, ish, at least, but I had no clue I was the freaking _mutant messiah_ ," she began, her words coming out in a rush, running both her hands through her hair. "I mean, how the hell was I supposed to know that I have every single mutant power ever? That's- that's just _nuts_."

"Uh," Emma gaped, but Hope didn't stop there.

"Apparently there's a future where I'm the freaking antichrist and I kill a million people in six minutes. _Six minutes_. How-" 

"That's obviously not you," Damian said with a considering scowl. "You wouldn't have the guts."

"No, you're right, I would be knee deep in them," Hope snapped, and began pacing. 

"I sincerely doubt that you could kill a million people in six minutes."

"But you don't doubt that I'm the antichrist?!"

"You're too weak for that too," Damian told her reassuringly, and Hope socked him in the shoulder. 

"Stop joking around! This is serious! I'm supposed to save the mutants! How the hell am I supposed to do that?!" Hope yelled angrily.

"Hope's the frickin' messiah," Emma muttered to herself. "I swear to _God_ I tried to find sane, chill people when I started making friends. Do I just attract superheroes? Is that what's happening here?"

Hope stopped glaring at Damian to stare at her.

"I mean... Maybe. You've got superhero parents, you've got me, you know Wade... It's possible that's your superpower."

"No, she has other superpowers," Damian said, eyebrows furrowing as his blue eyes turned sharp and calculating. "Why have you never shown any other signs of your powers?"

"It's complicated," Hope shrugged half-heartedly. Then she frowned, turned to look at Emma. "Wait a minute. What powers?"

"See that streetlight there?" Emma said as she pointed to a streetlight nearby. Hope nodded. "Keep watching it." Focusing, Emma closed her eyes and heard the shattering of glass, heard Damian take a sharp breath. 

Opening her eyes, she saw the confused people standing by, staring at the busted light. Nobody turned in their direction, however.

"You're not a mutant," Hope said slowly, eyes wide. "That's impossible."

"I don't know why that would be impossible, but no, I'm not. I'm a very successful guniea pig, really. Nothing very special about me."

"I disagree," Damian said with a scowl.

Emma rolled her eyes fondly. "Yeah, well, you're biased, boyfriend."

"Worth a try." She shot him a grin before she gripped Hope by the shoulders. 

"Okay, but, what's up with the desperate call? Except for the whole Messiah thing," she asked as she shook Hope a little. 

"I'm the frickin' mutant messiah. It felt like that was worth a call."

"True, true. On a scale of one to ten, how much are you freaking out?"

"Twelve."

"Do you need a hug?"

"Like a billion, please." Emma snickered and dragged Hope into a hug, letting the other redhead relax into her embrace. "Your hugs are seriously the best. I don't even know why. They just are."

"It's all about practice," Emma assured her as she smoothed her hands over the planes of Hope's shoulderblades. "Also, I hug very built people pretty much constantly, so my arms are very strong."

"I doubt that that's from hugging," Damian argued, standing next to them with his hands in his pockets and looking... Not exactly awkward, but not comfortable either. "It's really all in your powers."

"Well, the hugging practice sure helps," Emma argued. 

"It feels like being wrapped up in a warm blanket," Hope sighed into Emma's shoulder, and Emma grinned.

"You just wait until my breasts get bigger and I get taller. I'll be the greatest hugger ever," she smirked, and Hope giggled. "Want to come home to me? We could call TJ and Layla and have a movie night?"

"Your solution to everything is watching a movie or a tv-show," Damian complained.

"It's a great solution," Emma argued, and squeezed Hope tighter for just a moment. "What'dya say?"

"Okay," Hope said softly. Emma nodded as she pulled out her phone and began dialing their friends, leading Hope and Damian back towards the tower.

\---

"I swear to god, last time I counted heads, there were only two," Clint said as he dropped his jacket on the floor. He'd just gotten back from dealing with newbie Shield-agents, and he was absolutely exhausted. He hadn't seen any responsible adults on his way up, and he had no clue where Natasha was at, which meant he now had five unsupervised teenagers on his apartment to deal with.

Emma looked up from the couch, and shot him a sheepish smile. 

"Hi dad," she said sweetly, which was a clue that Clint was about to be wrapped even more around her slim pinkie, but that sweet smile of hers made his shoulders sag a little. The other heads on the couch swiveled around to watch him, and he recognized all of them as her pals.

"Having a movie night?" he asked, because that's what it looked like, and was what Emma liked to do. They hadn't had any family movie nights lately, so she was probably deprived. 

"Yeah," she said, leaning over the back of the couch and reaching out. He walked towards her, and recieved a kiss on the cheek that made him feel charmed and decidedly less exhausted than he had been a moment ago. 

"Who'd you ask for permission?" he questioned. Her big eyes turned even bigger with their supposed innocence. 

"Tony," she said, and Clint chuckled. 

"Of course you did. You kids have any allergies?" he asked the others, who all shook their heads. "Great. I was thinking pizza and snacks."

Emma's eyes lit up, and she smacked a kiss onto his other cheek for that. 

"Great minds think alike," she said, and jumped over the couch, nearly kicking Damian in the head as she did. He dodged the foot without looking away from Clint one moment, eyes slightly narrowed. 

"Someone pause the movie and we'll do a snackrun," he said, making a motion for them to follow him. "There's no way we have enough in the kitchen to sustain the five of you."

"Really?" Hope asked, looking genuinely surprised. Clint leveled her with a look, and snorted. 

"Yeah, no. We already have two supersoldiers, one demi-god, and one Hulk continuously trying to eat us out of business. We need to do the groceries anyway. C'mon, let's go, let's go!" 

Everyone got into their shoes with Clint urging them on, and he recieved a brief squeeze around the middle from Emma when they crammed into the elevator, Damian and Layla already arguing loudly about why lightly salted chips were disgusting or delicious.

\---

"Your dad is awesome," TJ announced as he swallowed a handfull of nerds. Layla made grabby hands for the pack, and he handed it over as Emma grinned.

"I know. My family is the greatest," she agreed as Damian dragged her down onto his chest. She went willingly, and got a sly look from Layla for her efforts. She rolled her eyes. "You need to stop looking like we're doing exactly what your master plan intended for us to do."

"But you are!" Layla argued as she pulled Hope into a one-sided hug, getting the redhead to toss her legs over Layla's. "I knew you two would hit it off."

"To be fair, the moment Emma opened her mouth, I knew she and Damian would get along," Hope shot in, chewing on some popcorn. "Just didn't know they'd get along _that_ well."

"At one point, I almost thought Layla and Damian were gonna start dating," TJ added. Layla burst out laughing, and Damian shot her a scowl.

"Fat chance," Layla snickered, clutching at her stomach as she laughed. 

"Layla and Damian seem like a recipe for disaster," Emma claimed as Damian wrapped an arm around her waist possessively. "And not the good kind of disaster."

"I think we argue too much for us to ever work out," Layla said. 

"I think the jock is just right for you," Damian replied mockingly. "Just simple enough to manipulate endlessly and stupid enough to think football is going to be his way to stardom."

"Chill out," Emma said with an eyeroll, and offered Damian a pack of Skittles to shut him up. "By the way, how's Aaron?"

Hope groaned as Layla sighed wistfully. 

"It's not just me that's noticed that she's gotten even more heart-eyes since they started dating, right? I thought that was when the illusions were supposed to stop," she said, and Layla tugged on her hair warningly. 

"So did I," Damian agreed, and Emma shot him a cute grin, before turning back to Layla.

"Aaron is great. Absolutely great. He's even nice to _Taylor_. Who's nice to him _too._ It's like stepping into the Twilight Zone whenever he's over. Even mom likes him!" Layla sighed again, smiling. 

"He seems like a respectable young man," Emma agreed. "But if he does anything to hurt you, there will be hell to pay. And I've been to hell. I know how to recreate it. You just give me a shout, and I'll pummel on him like he's a punching bag."

"Seconded," Damian shot in before he gave Emma a green Skittle from his pack. 

"That's why they go together," Hope said. "Right there. Their weird love-not-love for violence."

"It's not a love for violence," Emma protested as she poked Hope in the thigh with her toes. "It's knowing the need for it. I also own multiple weapons."

"No, you don't," Damian said with a frown. "Your family does."

"That doesn't sound nearly as threatening," Emma whined. 

"Please stop threatening my boyfriend when he's not even here," Layla said firmly as she grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl in Hope's lap. "I'm not gonna forward them."

"It's fine," Damian said as he swept some of Emma's hair out of his mouth and over a couch pillow. "I know where he lives."

"What?!" Layla exclaimed. 

"For emergencies. Don't worry," he said distractedly. 

"My friends are lunatics," she grumbled, and Emma shot her a blinding grin. 

"Squintsquad for the win, though," she said, holding her hand out for a fistbump. Hope granted her one, and Emma snickered as Damian buried his nose in her hair sneakily. 

She felt at peace.

\---

Natasha was hungry when she stepped into the private elevator and asked Jarvis to take her up to her floor. She'd been running a couple of errands when the store she'd been in had been robbed. Amateurs, of course, but she'd been without her bracelets and guns and only had one knife, which pissed her off as much as their incompetence did, and she'd almost broken one of the robber's neck. 

When the cops had finally arrived, she'd been stuck at the police station forever for them to get their damn statement, and on the way out, reporters had attacked her with questions on why she'd been arrested. The only reason she'd gotten away from them was because she'd pulled the disappearing act on them. 

After that, she'd had to walk back to where she'd parked her car, and then she'd driven back to the tower. She was hungry, and her arm was definitely going to bruise from where it'd been slammed into the counter during the robbery, and she was surprisingly a little tired. 

So when the doors opened to their floor, and she heard multiple voices, she closed her eyes for a brief moment to sigh, and then she stepped off the elevator.

Their couch was riddled with teenagers, sitting comfortably spread out over each other and looking very happy. The coffee table in front of them was filled with various snacks and drinks, and when Natasha looked over at Clint, who was standing by the kitchen island, smiling secretively, she saw that the kitchen island was just as much of a disaster.

She pulled her jacket off, and her shoes, and then she walked into the kitchen, her movement catching Clint's attention from the corner of his eye. He smiled at her as she approached, but didn't say anything. He was holding a twizzler between his fingers lazily, almost as if it was a cigarette.

"What," Natasha began, but then cut herself off.

"Emma brought a couple of friends home," Clint said defensively as he snacked on his twizzler. "TJ can't stand Jolly ranchers, so we had to get some twizzlers."

Natasha stared at the barricade of snacks on their kitchen counter, and then at Clint. He held the half-eaten twizzler out towards her as a peace offering, with a 'I know I'm cute' smile, and she snagged it with a shake of her head. 

"You enjoy being a dad too much," Nat said as he pulled her into his side to plant a kiss on her cheek.

"Don't you like being a mom?" Clint asked, and got to watch as Natasha's face softened as she looked over at their sugar-hyped daughter who was cuddled up to her friends. 

"Surprisingly, yes," she admitted reluctantly. She did like being a mom, most of the time. Calling herself a mother was still foreign, but seeing Emma's eyes light up as Natasha smiled at her, the way Emma relaxed into her touch whenever she stroked her hair... It was rewarding, in it's own way. "Don't get any ideas. The only thing we'll be adopting anytime soon is a cat."

"Why not a dog?"

"We already have a dog, and as much as Emma obviously enjoys that, she likes cats too. It seems only fair to get her a cat too," Natasha argued. 

"You just need an excuse to want a cat," Clint said as Natasha grabbed his face, stared into his eyes.

"We're getting a cat, whether you like it or not," she whispered, and then kissed him gently.

\---

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, Hope Summers is actually a pretty big deal with the mutants, and I wanted that to be a thing here too! Except now she has friends who like to help by hugging her. Yeah.  
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
